


The Arc of Conflict, Fragment e19,1: The Forge

by bzarcher, solarbird



Series: Of Gods and Monsters [126]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods & Goddesses, Art, Blacksmithing, Camping, Comfort, Divided Loyalties, Emotional Hurt, F/F, F/M, Father Figures, Germany, Identity Issues, Injury Recovery, Internal Conflict, Long-Distance Relationship, Oasis (Overwatch), Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Post-Talon, Talon Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Travel, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:20:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28206729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bzarcher/pseuds/bzarcher, https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarbird/pseuds/solarbird
Summary: Overwatch - or what is left of it - is at war with the Gods of Oasis. Russia is in a parallel war with itself, Katya Volskaya's government against the popular uprising led by the Aleksandra Zaryanova, the Goddess of Russia. As winter sets in, Zarya's March to Moscow has slowed to a crawl.Brigitte and Lúcio have now both survived death, and returned to what used to be their lives. In the Black Forest of Germany, Brigitte tries to figure out what survival means - and who or what she has become.Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflictis a continuance ofThe Arc of Ascension,The Arc of Creation, andThe Armourer and the Living Weapon. To follow the story as it appears,please subscribe to the series.
Relationships: Brigitte Lindholm & Reinhardt Wilhelm, Brigitte Lindholm/Hana "D.Va" Song, Brigitte Lindholm/Lúcio Correia dos Santos/Hana "D.Va" Song
Series: Of Gods and Monsters [126]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024
Comments: 25
Kudos: 26





	The Arc of Conflict, Fragment e19,1: The Forge

**Author's Note:**

> [The formerly invitation-only widowtracer discord server](https://discord.gg/NKnPpx43mK) has decided to open up to widowtracerly fans in general - yes, gingerspider shippers are welcome - so come join that if you like!
> 
> BUFFER WATCH: JANUARY 17, 2021.
> 
> (New fragment. It's close enough to a complete draft I'm willing to call it one. Plus, some work on the next Edda.)
> 
> dirtyclaws has launched [a public fan-run _Of Gods and Monsters_ discord server](https://discord.gg/pDZMpVT) and invites everyone to come join it!

After trying to wrap her head around everything that had happened and failing for about the 240th time, Brigitte checked out of her hotel room, said goodbye to her parents, and hiked out to the edge of the forest, where Reinhardt had parked his van.

Ingrid had wanted her home. Papa, too, when he met them all at the Swiss border. But after a couple of days in Konstanz, she realised she needed to move around - she could feel it - and she needed something normal, or close enough to it that she could mostly pretend.

And so, she went back to her knight, as his squire, and they travelled back to the Bavarian forests from which she and Lúcio had departed those weeks - that lifetime - ago. Back to her old duties. Back to blacksmithing, and armour, and electronics, and heat. Back to her old life, as it had been - she hoped.

Moving her forge was so trivially easy now. The anvil, too. It would have been exhilarating if it didn't make her so angry. If it didn’t represent such a betrayal, even if Hana believed it was her only option.

...maybe it was still just a little bit exhilarating, even so.

She grabbed her hammer from the van, and examined the plate and bar stock she had on hand before taking up some of the heat resistant alloy she normally shaped for the rocket hammer's replacement casings, and fired up the forge.

Even when nothing else made sense, metal, heat, and a hammer would. That was how it had always been, and she was counting on the act of forging to help ground and center her.

Normally working the alloy was a matter of hours without a power hammer, even for simple plates and vanes, but she _was_ her own power hammer now. And her own grinding wheel, but only with a good enough file. She'd found that out by wearing through a lesser one in under a minute.

But the creative parts - that was all still just her. And that helped. Even if she'd had to re-polish every shiny item she'd forged, before. It all looked so rough, so almost but not quite finished, to her new eyes.

In just under an hour and a half, she had shaped out what she decided on the spur of the moment to make: A camping coffee pot. They would need a new one anyway, and it wasn't like glass or plastic composite pots lasted long around Papa Reinhardt.

Another hour of shaping, refining, quenching and annealing saw the pot and its lid finished, and she smiled as she put it on the work table, smooth and refined. Then she grinned as an idea struck her.

She pulled off her work gloves, then held her hand above the forge to gauge the heat, nodded to herself, and banked it back a bit. 

She'd learned to make forge heated coffee early in her apprenticeship, and what better way to christen the new pot?

She still had a bag of coffee grounds tucked into a corner of the van's storage racks, and water from the hose would be fine, since she'd be boiling it anyway.

She put the water in, put the pot atop the forge, and when it began to boil the grounds went in and the lid went on as she set her watch timer for five minutes while she went to go find a few of their steel camp mugs.

Before long, Papa Reinhardt showed up, following his nose to the scent of the brew.

"Is that your coffee I smell?"

"Almost ready - grab a cup!"

"Hah! Wonderful! It's been too long." He sniffed again. "But I think it is burning."

"Yikes! I think you're right!" Brigitte grabbed the pot from the forge in one hand and turned to face an astonished looking Reinhardt.

"Is... something wrong?"

Papa Reinhardt's face went through several expressions before he tilted his head slightly. "Brigitte - where are your tongs?"

"Back in the van," she answered automatically. "Why?"

He nodded to the pot, and she looked at it with confusion before the realization hit her: While the pot's handle and lid felt pleasantly hot to her touch, the bottom had begun to glow a dull orange from the heat of the forge.

_That's... 600C. Ish. So the handle must be..._

She didn't want to think about how hot it must be.

"No wonder it's burnt... I... guess I didn't bank the forge as much as I thought." 

Reinhardt nodded sympathetically, but she thought there might be a tiny bit of fear in his gaze. "Perhaps it would be best to let it cool before we drink, then."

"Yeah," Brigitte said slowly as she put the pot on the anvil. "...yeah. Probably have to make the coffee over again. Maybe also the pot. Sorry, papa." 

"No harm done," he murmured as he walked over to give her a hug. "This is new, _ja?_ "

She nodded, tears in her eyes. "I suppose. It... would have to be."

 _This is what Hana tried to tell us before,_ she realized with a sudden pang of empathy that cut through her simmering anger. _You don't even think about it. You just... **are.**_

> _[Geneva, several days before]_
> 
> _"I really wish you would consider staying a little bit longer," Angela said, "while you finish growing into yourself. At least here, even if you won't come back with us to Oasis."_
> 
> _She'd made the same argument with Lúcio. It hadn't been any more effective, and he'd flown out a couple of hours before. **At least he's not an ultrastrong** , she thought a little nervously._
> 
> _Brigitte had dreamt the flower dream. Hana had told her what it meant, and that had been the final straw, and she was leaving. Doing what had to be done to save her, that was one thing. Bad, maybe, but not unnecessary. Adding on... **everything else...** was very much another thing entirely._
> 
> _"Am I gonna hurt anybody?" she asked. "Accidentally crush their arms or their heads or something?"_
> 
> _"No! Absolutely not, nothing like that," Angela disclaimed. "That's the entire point of the flower sequence. We all have perfectly good control over our physicality, it's just that you don't yet fully understand all you can do. We've written it up, but that's not..."_
> 
> _"Yeah, I know, I read it," Brigitte snapped. And she had. Or at least, she'd skimmed as much of it as she could stand to skim._
> 
> _Hana had brought her a couple of those "bars" she'd been playing with, back in Bergin. They turned out not even to be real steel, like she'd thought, but some sort of alloy, steel and quasi-magnetic semi-metal._
> 
> _And now - once she'd squeezed it into a ball - it made a pretty good tension-relief toy. A tension-relief toy that could hold up a truck, or punch through a wall, thrown hard._
> 
> _Which was also awfully, awfully easy to do._
> 
> _She reached into one of her pockets and squeezed it, like modelling clay, but metal, growing warm in her hand._
> 
> _"Then I'm out. Thanks for... keeping me alive, I guess. Maybe someday I'll get used to it."_

"Did you get any more sleep last night?" Reinhardt asked, having made another batch of coffee himself, after Brigitte cleaned and repaired the pot.

"No," Brigitte said. "A few hours is all. But I feel..."

Fine wasn't the right word. Physically, she felt amazingly great. She always did, now. It was hard to hate that part, as much as she thought she should.

"I don't think I need more than that anymore. I can make myself sleep longer, but if I sleep too much, I get too high energy. I can't slow down the next day."

"Lúcio said something similar, did he not?"

They'd been calling, daily. Comparing notes. It gave her something to do in the early, early mornings, or the late, late nights. He'd managed to read through his entire operating...

His file. His medical file.

She wouldn't let herself call it an 'operating manual.' To be fair, neither did _they,_ but that's how she thought of it even so, and the words kept coming back into her mind. She didn't like having an operating manual for her own body, even if she probably did kind of need one now.

She'd sent Lúcio a copy of her own data, thinking maybe he could get through it, and he had.

"Yeah. He says I've found a lot of it, but I've still got some more surprises coming. I didn't ask him what."

"Perhaps it's best this way," Reinhardt told her. "Perhaps discovering what you can do on your own will let it feel more like _you._ "

"I don't want it to feel like me! It's _not_ me!"

But she knew better. It was. She could feel it.

"Or... at least... it wasn't."

"I can think of worse fates," Reinhardt replied. "I know, I know. You didn't ask for it, and you didn't want it, and I do not question your feelings. But health and great strength are hardly the worst things that could happen to someone. And at least they did not change who you really are."

"I'm not who I was, though," Brigitte insisted. "Not entirely. What they call..." - she still kind of hated the word - "...'goddessness'... it's part of me now. I can feel it."

" _I know you,_ " Reinhardt stressed. "I've known you since the day you were born, and I still know you. Yes, some things about you have changed - but you, who you really are, has not. I am certain, even if you are still unsure."

"So quickly?" she asked, wanting to feel a little bit hopeful.

"Yes," he affirmed. "Even with Lena, I am told, a couple of days was enough to begin to know something inside her had changed. You are still you, in ways she was not. Trust me - I would know."

"...thanks, Papa Reinhardt."

"You are welcome, my squire. Well!" He finished his coffee, stood up, and breathed deeply of the winter air, grinning at the light of the late morning sun. "Ha HA! What a lovely day! We'd better get moving. Are you ready to pack up?"

"I'm on it," she said, downing the last of her own coffee, getting ready to load up her forge.

But as they resumed their travels half an hour later, she couldn't stop thinking, and wondering.

_If I'm really still me... and all this happened..._

_...missing Lúcio, sure, that makes sense. But after what she did..._

_...how can I still miss the way Hana **felt** so much?_

**Author's Note:**

> This is the fifty-fifth instalment of _Of Gods and Monsters: The Arc of Conflict_. To follow the story, [subscribe to the series via this link](https://archiveofourown.org/series/972024), rather than to the individual works.


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